


Sharkskin Boots

by Mamcine_Oxfeather



Series: s t i t c h [3]
Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 17:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20157718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamcine_Oxfeather/pseuds/Mamcine_Oxfeather
Summary: Part III in the STITCH series introduces the reality-bending mysteries of the Red Hat Ranch.  A deal is struck.  A partnership forged.  A life saved.





	Sharkskin Boots

_There's always creaks and the strangest sounds_  
_John Brown's body was never found_  
_But the locals see him walkin' round_

_There's a 'for sale' sign on the old farm roads_  
_There's a silo empty and done for_  
_The place just ain't the same no more_  
_Now it's shinin' all them different ways_  
_Crimson blues and yellow shades_

_-Gregory Alan Isakov_

**X x XxX xXx X xX . p r e s e n t . Xx X xXx XxX x X**

Conrad Achenleck, dead this past month, has been hired as a Desk Clerk with the Municipal Registrar, the city's vampiric Judicial Office. He has done all due diligence avoiding Doc Worth's clinic, to better safeguard Adelaide's presence in the city as well as to spare himself the indignities of Worth's post-cupid-arrow intent. In his spare time, Conrad has agreed to help Hanna Cross, to the indignity of his own post-cupid-arrow intent.

'The Red Hat Ranch' had taken over a broad flat valley spilling down the east side of County Road 261 B, nestled somwhere between a major southwestern city and the fuck-all scrub-rock landscape which the American civil war had stolen off of Mexico. Before its redevelopment, the land had been a junkyard and dumpsite for construction materials, gravels and plyboards and wires and kitchen sinks, tornado leftovers and casino remodel debris, whole slabs of highway and tall piles of tub surrounds. After the redevelopment, the land sat a smooth dirt plateau, the treasures of its past whittled mysteriously away, sold or shifted or buried, or, as Hanna Cross knew, eaten.

The Red Hat amusement park, so-called a ranch for alliteration in the marketing of itself, was a roughly hewn re-enactment town in the style of the wild west, with strict consumer-engagement rules regarding dress and utility, forgiving only in its use of modern embellishments like indoor plumbing, electricity to replace the carcinogenic wood or gas, and FDA-compliant kitchen and dining facilities.

Conrad straightens his cravat for the third time that night, sighing as he sits in a rickety wooden stool at the group's rickety wooden table in the taverna proper, awarding a baleful suspicion toward the oil lamps that lined the walls - fire hazard, weren't they? Genuine, sure, but smoky and dim and dangerous and he, a vampire, especially wary of tossable combustibles.

Hanna loves the oil lamps. He loves the swinging barroom doors and the fat barkeep spit-shining the glass mugs behind the green wooden counterface; he loves, _loves_ the sawdust on the floors and the wooden plates and tin utensils and the rule that the paying public could only wear cotton or linen or leather cut in the frontier fashion (which, okay, Conrad maybe sort of liked, too, if it weren't for Hanna bogarting all the historical nerdery).

Conrad hadn't been able to join the case until after sunset, when most of the tourists had gone home or retired to their rooms for the night. He had to admit that the fashion of the times suited Hanna, whose build matched that of the generation, underfed and rawboned by labor, flattered by those striped shirts and snug vests and thick-wooled trousers. Conrad himself, as the undertaker, had been put in something high-collared and satin-lined, red and black, with green spectacles in thin wire frames.

Ashton/Winona/Greenfield had been trussed up like Davey Crockett, leather tassle jacket and all, and set into a wooden coffin to pose as a shootout's latest casualty - propped up at the head of the taverna, eyes closed over their eerie orange glow, arms crossed over his chest, there to be left after-hours to listen in on any scheming the prop crew might be getting up to - because, of course, the Inn above the bar was haunted, and Hanna had to scooby-doo eliminate possible plots and/or suspects.

Veser, in the pinned sleeves and suspenders of a piano joe, thought Conrad looked 'pimp', even without the silk tophat. Toni had refused the bawdy burlesque costume and opted for more of a Calamity Jane ensemble, belted into a plain white longsleeve left untucked over leather chaps. She had dyed the green and blue streaks of hair black, just to be able to volunteer in the small tourist trap, gracefully opposing the production manager's suggestion that she wear a feathered headdress with all the patience Conrad would have never suffered - being vaguely not-white himself, but did they even have Jews in America back then?

"Dude, yeah," Hanna insists, eyes wide this time in disbelief. "Haven't you seen Deadwood? The main dude's best friend, like, he became a banker!"

Conrad's nose wrinkles. "Oh good. A stereotype for everyone."

Hanna looks slapped, but the shock slowly turns to suspicion, eyes rolling towards the ceiling in thought. "Yyyyeah..." he drawls, nodding. "Yeah, that show did a pretty good job stepping on all the toes that were being stepped on back then, I guess. You think this is the ghost of a Chinese rail worker, or a mining camp prostitute or something like that?"

Conrad dislodges his tinted specs to rub at his face, stomach clenching with another hunger pang - his 'mortuary' was right next to the town butcher, and he'd woken up from his roost in the mortuary basement with the air full of all that blood smell and only the one cold bag to answer his appetite for the entire night. "I don't know, Mr. Cross. Could just be a publicity stunt to attract more visitors." A stunt that had gone too far, by the emergency room reports.

"But why a paralytic?" Veser grumbles low over his flat plate of stew.

"Since this isn't some totally upset labor union come back to demand better housing, I'd guess whatever poison was used might have been measured to mimic a feeling of possession," Hanna explains, dipping a spoon carefully into Veser's plate to dribble the contents carefully over a rune he'd just drawn on the tabletop. The marker lines glow a faint blue, then disappear entirely, and Hanna slumps back, relieved but still perplexed.

Veser pauses over his next spoonful of dinner, and gingerly sets it back down to the plate.

Conrad tugs a handkerchief out of his sleeve to mop absently at the bit of stew left on the table. "Are we ready to rule out actual possession, then?" He eyes Hanna carefully, recalling the circumstances under which they'd met Veser Hatch, and Doctor Worth's adamant lecture about ghosts and possessions and the mysterious danger to Hanna's health therein.

"I guess we'd have to." Hanna waves dismissively. "I mean, five people at once? Even if there was more than one ghost, you hardly ever see cooperation on that scale. Something about how the non-space time flows differently for every lost soul, depending on what level of Limbo in which they happen to get stuck. And besides that, ghosts don't have the emotional maturity required to work together."

Conrad's mouth slants crooked in a suppressed grin. "Nor the living, usually."

"Hey, good observation. Yeah we're probably looking for a single suspect, here, like I definitely don't get any 'cult' vibes from this case."

Conrad shrugs his shoulders in a tight arc and tosses the soiled handkerchief to the tabletop. "So the asshole manager is the most likely candidate. Motive, opportunity, all that."

"The asshole manager is the one who hired us," Toni counters, not without some regret. "Poisoning is generally bad for business."

Conrad scoffs. "Generally, unless they blame a bad tin of peaches on a dead person instead. Then it's entertainment, and there's no saying we aren't being brought 'round as part of the circus."

Toni leans her chin on one hand, fingers curled around a clay mug of cider. "Are you always this suspicious?"

"Of asshole spectacle runners?"

Toni rolls her eyes. "Of people. It might actually just have been a bad can of peaches, accidentally served. If the show is making money off an accident, could just be coincidence. We were brought 'round to make sure this _isn't_ a ghost, not to bust the production on health code violations."

Conrad sneers, "What a loyal thespian we have."

"Dude," Veser protests. "Don't you think that's a little personal?"

Conrad and Toni share an exasperation that quells their bickering.

Hanna taps his fingertips across the tabletop impatiently. "Okay gang. Who wants to come help me draw tests for poison on peach tins, and who is going to canvas the neighborhood for shenanigans tonight? Conman, you think your nightvision can do us some good? Don't forget we're on the buddy system, here."

Conrad draws back, "I have nightvision?"

"Sure," Hanna insists, but then squints. "Don't you?"

Conrad shrugs.

"I can help him out," Toni volunteers, then, to Conrad - "We can canvas. Maybe get you something to eat so you aren't so bitchy."

Conrad scowls, arms crossed, but doesn't argue.

"Okaaay," Hanna drawls, shoving Veser over so they can exit the table's booth. "I'm gonna see who we can't question while we wait for the kitchen to empty. You two can get canvasing, and meet us back here midnight-ish, maybe? The trouble usually starts around then. Witching hour, yanno."

"Er," Conrad, nervous now, fidgets with a dented fork. "I doubt a perimeter check is going to take us until midnight."

"Dude, no, you're canvassing, not just taking a quick jog through the streets. Be thorough." Hanna steps past Veser, who is then tugged along by the collar mid-suggestive-wink.

Conrad looks as if he's just been thrown into a tank of sharks, sliding his glasses further up his nose and gritting his jaw before gesturing vaguely for Toni to stand so they can, at his grumble, 'get this over with'.

  
**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**

  
_"Jesusfuuuucggllbrdhghgd -"_

"DUDEWHYDIDYOUBITE IT."

Conrad doesn't answer Hanna's non-question, because every time Conrad opens his mouth, black blood is vomited up onto the (original! oak!) floorboards of the balcony.

Hanna, wild-eyed, is currently clutching atop the thrashing basilisk, while Adele/Benghazi/Corey struggles under the corpse of the bartender the lizard had inhibited - it was the spit, in the rag that had wiped the drinking glasses, that had so affected the patrons, slowly paralyzing them after a shared drinking hour.

Toni is slumped in phase near the stairs, having suffered a nasty bite, herself, and Veser is helping to push the heavy bartender's body off Darryl/Eugene/Finley.

The lizard snaps its jaws around Hanna's ankle, and pulls him off in a rough thrash.

Conrad lunges, and bites again.

"Stopbitingit -" Hanna manages to entreat once he kicks free of the creature's jaws, scribbling the rest of his interrupted runesign across the floor in wide sweeping arcs. Greg/Harrison/Indiana pulls an antique railroad spike from the wall and wedges it into the basilisk's mouth, propping its jaws open. The great lizard thrashes and squirms, so much larger than when it had first emerged, wrinkled and wet, from the back of the barkeep - it only seems to be growing bigger, eyes peeling open layer by layer of opaque eyelid, quickly approaching a lethal adulthood.

The runes glow - the lizard thrusts its clawed foot through the floor and breaks the read in a splintering crack - Veser's feet are knocked out from under him by the sweep of a thick tail and he crashes into Keith/Lars/Maybelline on his way over with another railroad spike.

A shotgun blast interrupts the clusterfuck, the ensuing silence broken only by the heaving release of another gutful of brackish blood, Conrad bent double over the (original! oak!) balcony rail as the asshole production manager stands from his crouch at the top of the stairs, gun in hand.

Hanna scrambles upright to help Veser from under the limp basilisk tail, the both of them stumbling to Toni, who had phased back to recover.

"Down," asshole manager commands, and it takes all present a delayed moment to register the demand before the balcony under their feet begins to groan ominously, the basilisk having grown to roughly the size of an orca before it had met its demise by shotgun blast through its propped-open maw. _"Down,"_ the asshole production manager urges again, tugging Toni's arm over his shoulders to hasten the party clear of the gradual cracking and splintering descent the lizard corpse takes through the floorboards into the kitchen below.

They clear the stairway to its lopsided settle against the damage, Conrad kneeling on the last stair to dry-heave and gasp.

"Dude, wh-" Veser protests, wide-eyed, as Hanna whips the stage manager's hunting knife free of his thick belt and marches over to Conrad.

"Ugh," Tony winces, turning her face into the wall against which she had been propped, clutching the manager's duster over herself. All present hold unspoken protest as Hanna drives the knife into Conrad's heaving stomach, and Veser contributes his own dinner to the floorboards after watching the pale wriggle of a bloody snake-lizard fall out of Conrad's opened body cavity.

Jericho/Kelly/Liam helpfully drag Conrad clear of the stairs. Hanna stomps the mini basilisk under his heeled boot with all the fervor of a startled housewife stomping a cockroach, equal parts panicked and vengeful. He straightens once the thing is clearly dead, tugging his vest from its wrinkle with a declarative snap.

Toni moans soundlessly behind her clenched fist. Conrad lay open-eyed on the top of the bar where he'd been dragged by the dead man and the asshole manager. Conrad does not move, the silk of his costume dark and wet around the hole where his guts had been.

"He'll be paralyzed, like the others," Hanna croaks, wiping his forehead with the back of the hand still holding the knife.

The stage manager (not an asshole, not really, just brusque and practical and a bit cheap), a stocky bearded man in gold wire spectacles, presses thick fingers to Conrad's neck. "I think you killed him, son," he rasps in a soft Texan accent, robbed of his bluster.

Hanna opens his mouth, but the taverna doors are kicked open and a younger, more fit version of the manager storms in, expression thunderous. His beard is ginger, not gray, but he sports the same blue eyes behind the same gold wire specs. "Yer fuckin' lackeys wouldn't let me pass til I changed clothes, ya fuckin' loony! I had ta leave my badge an' gun at the gates! The FUCK is even goin' on around here!"

"Badge?" Hanna squeaks.

"He's not dead," Toni quickly interjects, tugging the manager away from Conrad.

"Dead?!" Manager Jr. all but roars.

"I know dead from livin'," the manager protests, snuffling behind his beard in agitation. "Like poor Vergil up there. That's one dead barkeep."

"The barkeep's name was Mike!" Manager Jr. throws his cowboy hat to the floor with an angry swat. "And who the hell _stabbed the undertaker!"_

"Er," Hanna shuffles behind the zombie, knife tucked behind his back. "Mr. BeVonte? I'd like to collect on the case, and get on our way."

The asshole manager loads another shell into the shotgun's chamber with a perfunctory clack. "Nobody's goin' nowhere until we get Doc Rhett on over here ta make a decision. Xachary, fetch yer brother."

"Um," Hanna drops the knife discreetly behind himself, kicking back at it to try and slide it under a table. "I met your son earlier today. I don't think there's anything he can -"

"If you met Rhett," Mr. BeVonte interrupts gruffly, "then you'd know he ain't my son. Xacharia!"

"I'm gettin'," Xacharia assures, both hands held up as he retreats to the door, swiping up his hat so he could tip it to Toni on his way out.

"What you need to do," Hanna lectures in an even tone, palms turned up in supplication. "Is find how your bartender originally died. Basilisks don't inhabit the living, they only hatch out of corpses denied a decent funeral. Check, um, check his background. Background check, yeah, employers can do that right?"

But Mr. BeVonte only crosses his arms, gun aimed at the floor, grim and silent as his gaze shifts from the dead man to Conrad to Toni and back.

"Okaaay," Hanna scrubs the back of his neck. "Just so you know, it's in my employment contract not to be held liable for any injury, death, or loss of property in the course of -"

"And it's in _my_ literature that so long as any fool remains in the park, he or she is my responsibility ta keep safe, ain't it? Have a seat, Mr. Cross, Rhett is a slow waker and a grouchy cuss fer his brother, but he'll show."

Hanna breaks out in a cold sweat. "I really _really_ don't think that's necessary, like I said, I met your stepson and I know he can't -"

"You'd be surprised what Rhett can do." Mr. BeVonte strolls behind the bar, sets his gun down in reach to start fixing himself a Rye.

Veser helps drag Conrad to the middle of the tavern, Toni and Hanna hefting Conrad atop a table, Maurice/Nathaniel/Oto removing the kerosene lamp to make room.

Hanna struggles at Conrad's legs, "I kind of, hng, oof - hey, how come he got spurrs - I kind of know exactly what Rhett can do? I just don't have the means to _pay him_ for it."

"You'll owe him a favor," Mr. BeVonte assures cryptically, shrugging. "I ain't about ta let nobody leave my care eviscerated, you hear me?"

Veser huffs, "Gee, thanks." He carefully tucks Conrad's longcoat shut over his wound, fingers light as they press Conrad's eyelids shut.

Hanna watches, thoughtful. "He'll be fine," he croaks.

Toni hugs the duster tighter against herself. "He's not fine now, though."

Hanna's voice is wet, "I thought you were gonna get him to eat, tonight."

Toni bristles, "The only person we could find alone was some creep hanging out at the clinic, and Conrad said he'd had enough of that sort of thing, so...? You can lead a freaking horse to water, dude, but you can't make it not save your life biting a lizard the size of a flipping boat."

The creep from the clinic is the one to interrupt the terse silence, shuffling lazily in, ducking to fit comfortably through the historically accurate (read: fuckin' tiny) doorframe. He has Xacharia's ginger hair and nothing else, freckled and lean and yellow-eyed as a snake, clean shaven and devoid of expression.

"What's the ruckus?" Rhett mumbles from around a lipful of chewing tobacco, hands on hips, period surgeon outfit rumpled but clean. "I smell gunsmoke." After a pause, "What knocked the ceiling in?"

"Basilisk," Hanna chimes, walking right up to the easy cowboy in the doctoring smock. "Our friend here is paralyzed, but if we can just get our check and take him home, he can sleep it off!"

Rhett eyeballs Hanna and Mr. BeVonte, chewing, chin jutting out. "Ya heard the policy though, right?"

Both BeVonte and Hanna answer yes, Xacharia only cusses softly.

Rhett takes a breath, kicking over to Conrad's table to stare Veser down out of his way. "Helluva thang," Rhett mutters, sucking air between his teeth and aiming a glob of tobacco butter toward the nearest spitoon. "Dead men what don't get no rest fer theyselves."

Orange eyes flash from the foot of the table.

Rhett slides a thin finger along Conrad's coatfront. "What's the wound unner this jacket?"

"C-section," Veser deadpans. _"Leave off,_ Longshanks. We aren't gonna buy whatever it is you're selling."

"Down, puppy," Rhett chuckles. "Ain't Satan hisself come ta scratch you a deal. Just me doin' as I'm bid ta do." To Hanna, "Cross, was it? I don't want old bone-digger here ta drive somethin nasty between my ears should he wake a'sudden? If you could go ahead an' hold one a these, er, feminine arms 'a his down, I'd be much obliged."

Xacharia shuffles in to help, mouth set in a grim line as he braces his broad weight on an arm that does, by comparison and especially clad in the satin of the coat, look as silver screen starlet's. The length Conrad's fingers had grown was the cause of the illusion, tapered and sharp and elegant, a vampiric wile frozen mid-battle.

Rhett carefully peels Conrad's longcoat open, and then not-so carefully plunges his entire hand into Conrad's chest cavity.

"Hey -" Veser protests, pressed back by a Davy Crockett zombie.

"Shh," Hanna scolds, waving Toni over with the lamp to better see by as Rhett pulls a flat stone out of Conrad with an obscene squelch.

"Scales," Rhett mumbles, eyes flashing narrow. "He bite the thing, 'r what."

"Yeah," Hanna answers with a sigh of regret, "I have an office we can bring him to, so -"

"Yer friend a vampire, Mr. Cross?" This, from Xachary beside his half-brother.

Hanna smiles warily. "Please don't hold that against him."

A curl of smoke drifts from the corner of Rhett's mouth, no cigarette to be seen. "Naw, see, just that fucknuts over here don't believe no such thing. Devil's own spawn beside him his whole goddamn life, and he don't believe in ghosts or the undead. Tsch." He elbows Xachary out of the way, bloodied hand gripping Conrad's wrist to keep him pinned. "We got any plastic? Saran wrap, garbage bag, anything?"

There is a murderous silence as the asshole stage manager's face clouds over. "Never in this camp," he grits between his teeth.

Rhett nods at Paul/Quatre/Roy, who is already schucking his jacket. "Leather'll do. Mr. Cross, is yer friend here a particularly bitey vampire?"

Toni scoffs, "Not at all," she complains, joining Hanna on his side of the table to help hold down Conrad's arm, just in case.

"Well, good." Rhett drapes the tassled jacket over Conrad's gaping midsection, pressing down hard to seal the wound. He hikes a skinny knee easily atop the table to pin the crook of Conrad's elbow, and bends to tilt Conrad's chin up with thumb and forefinger, kissing him full on the mouth. At least, to the horrified silence of the group, it looks like a kiss. Rhett draws back to spit brackish blood to the floor, expression terse as he leans down again to suck more of the Basilisk poison out of Conrad's piping. The jacket on the wound caves a little with each pull, Rhett trading mouth for fingers, face smeared in blood, drawing another scale out from the back of Conrad's throat.

Veser and Toni match for blushing, trading a look equal parts furious and concerned and just plain scandalized. Hanna is somber, though, eyes glued to Rhett as smoke curls up out of every word.

"Should do it," Rhett assures, dropping the scale to the tabletop and wiping his hands on his smock hem.

"Excuse me, uhh," Veser holds both hands up. "Did you just say you were the devil's spawn? Am I the only one who heard that?"

"Patron Saint 'a Gluttony," Rhett salutes dutifully. "Or I will be, once I'm martyred."

"That. Is incredibly creepy!" Veser crows merrily. To Hanna, "Can we _leave_ now?"

Conrad sits up like a stage prop on a spring board, rumpled and squinting, hands returned to their human length. He glares suspiciously at Rhett, then hunches violently forward to spit a small brown wad of chaw tobacco in his palm, holding it shakily out toward the park doctor. "I believe this belongs to you."

  
**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**

  
"Cross," Rhett barks out from the din of the thunderstorm that had broken open over the valley, eyeglasses flashing reflections of gaslamp and lightning as he approaches at a hasty lope down the muddy town road. "You read over the deal?"

"I did!" Hanna waves from the town gate, clutching his phone inside the lapel of his sport jacket. Manager BeVonte waylays Rhett from crossing the boundaries of the camp, so Hanna cups a hand to the side of his mouth to shout, "Terms TOTALLY accepted!"

"What terms?" Mr. BeVonte jerks Rhett's lapel to demand, but a sparking, smoky laugh is his only answer.

Inside the van, smelling still of wet wool and basilisk oil, Conrad glowers silently beside Veser's reproach - "I don't think deals with demons are the sort of thing I signed on for, here."

Hanna clambers into the van to tug the sliding door shut with a muffled whump, falling to an empty seat to sigh sharp exhaustion. He wags his foot against Veser's in a light kick. "You technically didn't technically sign on for anything, technically. Which you probably should, if you want the literature to cover any accidental loss of property or life."

"You're insured?" Conrad drawls from behind his temple-massage. _"I'm_ not even insured."

"Mmmnnnoooo," Hanna corrects, wringing Mojave/Butterscotch/Henry's jacket sleeve of spare rainwater. "It's just a contract, for the clients. Assurance of payment, yadda yadda, liability release. We had them at the car wash! For the people who got all dumb and weird about 'microscratches' on their paint jobs."

Conrad despairs silently, an open-palmed appeal to the zombie at his elbow for moral support. "Car wash contracts?"

"How is your wound?" The zombie merely deadpans instead, with a passively interested lean closer.

Conrad colors, just a little bit, fang overtaking the side of his bottom lip. "I don't know. I'm trying to ignore it, honestly."

"You should listen to your discomforts," Prescott/Rutabaga/Darlene suggests, nodding once. "Dead bodies are considerably more susceptible to irreversible damages. You could lose mobility."

"Oh." Conrad frowns forward, immediately consumed with all the new, terrible possibilities now laid out before his imagination. "I'm pretty sure vampires heal, though? Sort of? All my childhood scars have up and disappeared, anyway, so that's... something."

Zombie, "If you're invulnerable to the pains that would normally stop a mortal risk, chances increase for catastrophic wounding that is less likely to heal."

"Wellll," Conrad braces against the van's next hard turn onto the highway proper, and the cabin lights go dark to the tune of Toni and Veser bickering in the front over whose soda belongs to which cupholder. "Thanks for the advice. I've seen a badly scarred vampire, I think, Casimiro? Missing an eye? Do you know what that's about?"

"Probably a holy wound," Hanna supplies, scrubbing tired eyes. "Kirk is right, though, you should risk less of yourself, now, Conman, not more. Vampires are kinda fragile."

Conrad sours at the word 'fragile', eyes narrowing. "They gave me a pamphlet, at the registry office. Most injuries can be slept off."

Hanna's eyes boggle, blue tracing iridescent from the snap of the lightning overhead. "But for, like, decades! If you're hurt bad enough you have to hibernate in native soil, you're out of commission for a long while."

"OkAy," Conrad tosses his hands forward, glancing away. "Fine. No more giant lizard wrestling. Got it. You win."

The zombie tilts his head, a new expression settling behind his eyes and into the corners of his dry mouth. "You were brave, when you yet lived. That's admirable." He crosses his arms, smile glancing into this new facet of emotion (which Hanna watches, rapt). "But no less stupid."

Conrad twists to regard the zombie with half-pinched confusion, half unpinched pride. "Beg _your_ pardon, Flaily McGee. Who socked the barkeep in the face, first?"

The zombie blinks slow, and Hanna chuckles.

Veser clambers back from the front seat he'd invaded, kneeling between Conrad and Tommy/Chucky/Angelica to interrupt the intimacy of their quiet conference. "Dude, how's your stomach? Shouldn't you be laying down?"

Conrad frowns, first because Veser is being unusually childish in his open jealousy and second because - "On the floor?"

Veser holds Conrad's regard for a long second, then braces a hand on an overhead equipment rack to stand. Maintaining the detatched stare-down, he nudges a foot back to kick under a middle seat a few times - until a spring bar is finally snagged, stomped, laying the chair out flat in a recline, which unfolds a footrest.

Hanna aims a finger-gun Veser's way. "That was cool," he informs Bob/Linda/Archer, who allows an eyebrow to rise in agreement.

Conrad audibly exhales, then lays himself carefully out on the reclined seat, watching the rock of the van as a wagging of the stains on the padded cabin ceiling. Veser is still standing, hand bracing him upright as if on a subway, and trades looks ahead out into the road, and back down again at Conrad, equally concerned with the direction of both.

**X x XxX xXx X xXX x XxX xXx X xX**


End file.
